WND EXCLUSIVE

All outdoor Christmas decorations banned

City district nixes any displays of popular holiday

Don’t expect to see Christmas lights, Christmas trees, or other Christmas decorations in one part of Berlin, Germany, even on private property, after officials in the Kreuzberg district banned the display of anything that celebrates the Christian holiday – because someone might be offended.

“Why should religious festivals be celebrated in public?” asked Social Democratic Party Councilor Martin Becker, according to the German news site MMNews.de.

The censorship was supported by the left-wing councilman as a response to demands by Muslims in the district that they be allowed to celebrate the end of Ramadan in the streets. Due to a fear of noise complaints, council officials decided that the best solution was to ban all religious festivals from being publicly celebrated in the district.

The ban includes decorations on private property if they could be seen by the public, according to reports. And the only exception reportedly will be a location the government would designate for a Christmas tree.

But other controversial events will still be allowed to take place in the area. According to an interview Becker gave to a local Berlin news outlet, “gay” and lesbian festivals will still be permitted to take place in Kreuzberg.

The measure also took away honorary awards for citizens based upon religious merit, as left-wing councilors saw no religious service as worthy of consideration.

Members of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, who currently are the largest party in the national parliament, and Christian leaders in Berlin have decried these developments as a revival of atheistic practices that were mandated by the communist regime of East Germany, according to a report published in Der Tagesspiel.

But most of the bans in the U.S. have involved decorations that are on public property, such as a school or municipal building, and have not involved a ban on decorations on private property that can be viewed by the public.